Swipewipe app changed my life, says TikTok star. Meet the Stratham man behind it.

Aqeel Hisham, Portsmouth Herald
Updated ·6 min read

HAMPTON — Do you have thousands of pictures and videos in your camera roll, with most of them being duplicates? Do you find going through them a hassle and having to pay for additional storage on the cloud?

Enter Swipewipe, an app intended to make cleaning your camera roll easy. Like Bumble and Tinder, the app allows users to swipe left or right, but instead of choosing dates, you filter your pictures and videos. Swipe right to keep them and left to delete them.

Hampton native and Stratham resident Adam O’Kane might have just solved one of smartphone users' biggest issues — decluttering your camera roll. The 33-year-old app designer said the idea came to him as he was trying to clean up his own photos and videos.

Hampton native Adam O’Kane is a co-creator of a new app called Swipewipe. The app works like Tinder, but instead of dates, you’ll be filtering what pictures to keep and what to delete on your phone. The app has more than 500,000 users in the past 30 days.
Hampton native Adam O’Kane is a co-creator of a new app called Swipewipe. The app works like Tinder, but instead of dates, you’ll be filtering what pictures to keep and what to delete on your phone. The app has more than 500,000 users in the past 30 days.

“It took a long time, and there was not a good way to do it,” he said. “I looked for other apps that would help with the process of cleaning up your camera roll, and there were a bunch out there … none of them worked as I kinda imagine my ideal app to do this would work.”

With experience in creating apps, O’Kane reached out to a fellow friend in Vietnam, Tuan Nguyen, and the duo started the process for Swipewipe. O’Kane said the app was his easiest to create and most successful.

From start to finish, it took O’Kane and Nguyen between two to three weeks to complete the initial version of the app.

O’Kane said his approach for Swipewipe was different from previous projects.

“Usually, if I have an idea, I kinda rush into it, and I try to make it happen quickly,” said O’Kane. “Whereas for Swipewipe, I let it marinate a little bit in my brain, and I think that proved to be helpful because, by the time I was ready to sort of put it into action, I knew how it should look. I knew how it should work.”

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How does Swipewipe work?

Swipewipe, so far, has about 562,000 users globally and was recently ranked No. 20 in the Apple App Store Utilities chart. The app, available for Apple users since March 2022, just made its way to the Android market this month.

The app divides your photos and videos by months, a vibrant color representing each one. Users then can go through their camera roll by utilizing a swiping mechanism – swiping right to keep and left to delete.

Hampton native Adam O’Kane is a co-creator of a new app called Swipewipe. The app works like Tinder, but instead of dates, you’ll be filtering what pictures to keep and what to delete on your phone. The app has more than 500,000 users in the past 30 days.
Hampton native Adam O’Kane is a co-creator of a new app called Swipewipe. The app works like Tinder, but instead of dates, you’ll be filtering what pictures to keep and what to delete on your phone. The app has more than 500,000 users in the past 30 days.

“That mechanism of when you have a binary choice, what’s easier than that?” said O’Kane.

O’Kane said swiping left doesn’t automatically delete content from your phone permanently. Once users are done with one specific month, Swipewipe will request their authorization to delete selected content from the Photos app through Swipewipe.

So, don’t worry if you accidentally swipe left on a precious memory. As a last resort, users will still be able to recover deleted pictures or videos from the “recently deleted album.”

Swipewipe only works once users allow the app all access to their photos. O’Kane said privacy is something he doesn’t take for granted.

“Anytime when you’re granting permission to your camera, there could be a little anxiety for some people,” said O’Kane. “I’m always quick to assure people we have absolutely no access to anybody’s photos – we can’t, nor would we do anything with your photos.”

Basic usage on the app is free, but additional features like unlimited swipes and no ads is $29.99 per year. Swipewipe also provides fun stats such as images swiped on, images deleted, and memory saved.

“People were telling me how they, up to this point, have been paying for iCloud storage to manage all their images, and they’ve now cleaned so much of their camera roll that they don’t have to pay for storage anymore,” said O’Kane. “It’s like a money saver thing … they’re happy to pay for the app because now they don’t have to pay for storage going forward.”

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Swipewipe garners national acclaim

Swipewipe was featured on KTLA Channel 5 in May, where tech reporter Rich DeMuro said the app is a “handy” tool for users to start their “organizational journey.”

On Aug. 31, Australian TikTok duo Sal and Al of Two Broke Chicks referred to Swipewipe as an app that “changed my life.” The viral video garnered over 1.2 million views with over 119,000 likes.

Two Broke Chicks is a fashion and lifestyle TikTok page by social media influencers Alex Hourigan and Sally McMullen. The page has around a quarter of a million followers and 8.4 million likes in total.

Hampton native Adam O’Kane is a co-creator of a new app called Swipewipe. The app works like Tinder, but instead of dates, you’ll be filtering what pictures to keep and what to delete on your phone. The app has more than 500,000 users in the past 30 days.
Hampton native Adam O’Kane is a co-creator of a new app called Swipewipe. The app works like Tinder, but instead of dates, you’ll be filtering what pictures to keep and what to delete on your phone. The app has more than 500,000 users in the past 30 days.

O’Kane attributed the TikTok video – among many other interactions and opportunities – to what boosted the number of users to over half a million in September. With the density and competitiveness of the tech industry, O’Kane described himself as “lucky.”

“Utilities (apps) aren't thought of as a cool thing to build,” he said. “There’s less attention paid to it, which maybe allowed us to bring more of a consumer focus and sensibility to this area that gets overlooked.”

A Winnacunnet High School graduate in 2008, O’Kane attended the University of New Hampshire and majored in communications. However, his involvement in the tech world started when he was around 17.

O’Kane is also involved with the community, often volunteering and mentoring younger talents. Last year, O’Kane was named 2022 New Hampshire’s Big Brother of the Year. O’Kane and his wife, Isabelle, welcomed their daughter, Winnie, a couple of years ago.

O’Kane also co-owns O’Kane Marketing, a real estate marketing agency in Hampton, with his brother, Andrew. With the success of Swipewipe, O’Kane is focused on balancing it all. He said he is already working on some ideas for another app.

Since the launch of Swipewipe a year and a half ago, O’Kane said one of his favorite moments happened recently.

“Last month, in line at Canobie Lake Park … I saw a couple of girls using my app,” he recalled. “It was a thrill to see someone using this thing that I basically made in my basement… kind of felt like a musician hearing their own music in public, or an author seeing a book they wrote.”

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This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Swipewipe: The app that lets you swipe away your camera roll clutter